DotP 2012 is a huge step up from the previous failure "Duel of the Planeswalkers" (2009) which was a terrible direct port from XBL. While much has been fixed from 2009's release, with improved graphics, UI, and controls, DotP 2012 still struggles to properly emulate the actual Magic: The Gathering card game. The devs are so bent on keeping the players from editing their own decks that they purposefully include simplistic and poorly designed decks. Many decks are binary with boring win conditions and are missing their color's most basic traits, with unlocks only adding bigger numbers and not wider options. However, compared to DotP 2013 and 2014, I think overall this has the best decks. Besides the boring deck design, the real problem with the decks is the unlock system: although you only have to unlock 20 cards total and multiple can be unlocked at once, they lock you out of all the best cards. As you get deeper into the campaign, you are basically forced to continue using one deck, backtrack (or play MP) to "grind" to unlock more, or pay to unlock a deck. This problem is most visible in the Revenge campaign, where your opponents have every card unlocked in every duel.

So what makes DotP 2012 worth picking up? It has the best game modes out of the three numbered releases; Archenemy is great fun because of the wildly powerful effects of the Archenemy's deck, even just with (or against!) AI. With all the expansion decks, 2012 also has the most decks available at 19 total. My favorite are Dark Heavens (B/W angels & tokens) and Ancient Depths (G/U mana ramp & eldrazi). Despite the multiplayer bugs and lag issues, I think this is the best DotP game available and is the best intro to MTG for new players.

I've given MTG 2012 quite a few tries, but ultimately cant recommend it. I want to like it, and when it works properly its even kinda fun, but the amount of things wrong with this game are staggering. Poor UI design AND clunky interface, slow animations, automatically progressing turn timers, dumbing down of well understood mechanics, card logic bugs, autotapping/instacast, lack of proper deck building.. Ultimately some of those design choices can be overlooked. And some card logic issues can be forgiven. But the thing that comes back and kicks you in the face time and time again is the fact that the user interface for this game is just garbage.

1: The interface is HORRIBLE. From the main menu design, to the way that cards are displayed in the game. The cards in your hand are nearly too small to read and overlap eachother despite having plenty of room to display. You have to zoom in on nearly every card to read it. You often cant see whats in your hand or on the battlefield due to something obscuring your ability to look at it. Many situations will ask you to make a decision before you've had a chance to either consult your hand or battlefield to figure out how you wish to respond. No key customization either. Mouse controls are pretty terrible too, although its hard to explain why.. everything is just crammed together in such a way that it obscures everything else and makes clicking on things difficult.

2: Deck building: You cant. You start with 60 cards in a deck, and you unlock 20 more cards. These cards get AUTOMATICALLY added to your deck after every time you unlock a card.. meaning that for an optimal deck you have to go and remove them from your deck after each and every game. You also cannot select how many land to put in. the deck builder automatically does that for you. Also, scrolling left/right through the deck of cards to remove them is time consuming and tedious. Cant remember if its 2012 or 2013, but if you are zoomed in on a card while trying to build a deck and go to switch cards, it zooms out and then back in for each and every card rather than just instantly flipping.

3: The turn and phase timers. (this -mainly- applies to multiplayer but to some degree single player too.) The timer is terrible. Yes its important to make timely decisions, but the timer in this game is frustrating. The turns pass automatically unless you pause them, rather than prompting you to pass priority. When you do 'pass' the turn, then theres still a ~4 second countdown that allows your opponent to interact, even when playing with the AI in multiplayer which chooses not to interact. If you are an MTGO player and try to play MTG2012 you will want to scream at how poor the system feels. Its designed to be newbie friendly as best i can tell.. As someone who was once a newbie to the 2012 planeswalker game, i found it frustrating. As someone was has 30+ hours into it, it still is. Sometimes i find that i cant seem to pause the game at the right time, other times i dont realize that its been paused and sit there like an idiot waiting.

4: Interacting with cards at the right times is nearly impossible, its very easy to miss opportunities due to an automatic pass timer rather than a 'finished' prompt as might be found in MTGO. To this day i've never once been able to figure out the proper time to regenerate a creature in MTG 2012. Logically you would regenerate it after it takes damage, does MTGO bring up a prompt and ask you if you'd like to regenerate it during/after combat damage is being assigned? Nope.

5: Triggered effects: Many cards give your entire team triggered effects. Such as any time a creature enters the battlefield, gain one life. Each time this effect triggers, theres a 3-5 second animation that plays. Each time a creature lifelinks, 3-5 second animation. Having 2-3 creatures that get +1/+1 counters each time you gain life, and multiple creature with lifelink, 3-5 second disruption per creature, per lifelink. I've literally had turns against the AI where i walk away for a minute or two at a time while waiting for trigger animations to resolve. I can understand why this kind of system is in place, however this can make a game that should take 15-20 minutes, take well over an hour, sometimes two. Theres no such thing as a fast turn, especially not against the AI.

6: Cards on the field which have enchantments or equipment on it are near impossible to sort through or to target and require pixel perfect accuracy, especially those that are stacked with multiple enchantments. Double that difficulty for cards with flying that bounce up and down as you try to click on the 2-3 pixel wide card just barely sticking out from the side of your other. If you dont get the target right the first time you dont get a second chance when targeting.

7: Selecting the right card in your hand (or from your deck/graveyard when searching) with the mouse can be very tricky. Theres a very narrow window of where the center of the card is Its about 1/3 the card's width. Its incredibly easy to bump the mouse and cast the wrong spell. The deck builder has the same problems. Theres enough room at the bottom of the screen for the cards to be bigger, and to not overlap so significantly. Considering that a click means autocast, you better get it right the first time.

8: Tapping land is done automatically and the auto-tapper can and will screw you. This not being a toggled option for players baffles me. Considering all the issues with the interface though.. maybe this is actually some sort of blessing in disguise. Typically im going to say no, its not.

9: The time between when one game ends and when the next one begins can be fairly lengthy with unnecessarily long pauses and loading screens. When you win or lose a game you are stuck at the 'game over' screen for what seems like 10-15 seconds before it sends you back to the menu. When trying to do the puzzle challenges this was exceptionally infuriating, one accidental click that you cant take back and there goes 30-45 seconds of restarting ontop of all the time you wasted with unskippable animations and such. There is nothing at all in this game that is fluid, fast, or free flowing.

10: The AI. In multiplayer the AI is fairly bad. Playing two headed giant with a friend where the enemy had literal unblockable creatures during a semi-stalemated board, it only attacked with them once or twice. Apparently if you get enough creatures on the board the AI will just stop attacking entirely even when it has the advantage. Having many creatures with two unblockables that could continue to do damage turn after turn and who wouldnt be viable defenders; the AI just sits there turn after turn. Perhaps it simply does not understand unblockable, Or perhaps its incapable of functioning properly in a multiplayer experience or with so many units on the board. As far as i can recall it seemed to be a decent opponent in single player, mostly.

11: Bugs: Bugs that cause the host of a multiplayer game to get disconnected from his own game. Bugs that cause you to be unable to cast spells on your own turn, bugs that break the interface in some regard and cause you to be incapable of continuing your match, bugs that stop you from being able to swap out of and into the game.

Couple all the bugs with the relatively awful UI, the dumbed down 'user friendly' systems, and slow and general clunkiness of the game and honestly the experience feels pretty unsatisfying overall. The only redeeming quality of this game is that its one of only a few modern MTG games that has a single player component to it. And i -believe- its the only modern magic release (2012-2014) that has the arch nemesis game mode, which is actually quite fun.

A much simpler remake of the older "Magic The Gathering: Online" game. There's not as much deck customizeability as there was in the first online version of the game, but there's also not any microtransactions or money sink either. So if you're looking for MTG without the headache of having to purchase & trade your way to an awesome deck (or ten) then this game's going to be everything you're looking for. If your favorite part was the deck building, then you might not like the way MTG went with this iteration.

If you've never played MTG (online or physical) then it's a card game that set the standard for card games. If you like strategic card games and simple math, then this game's perfect for you. It ramps up pretty quickly, but this iteration of MTG:O does a better version of showing you the ropes than previous versions and/or your buddy would.

While the single player is fun, the multiplayer leaves much to be desired. Filled with endless bugs, the creators seem more interested in making profit than releasing a good product.

If you are only interested in running the campaign, its definitely something I would recommend, however if you are interested in playing your friends stay far away from this version and upgrade to a newer version like 2014 which seems to have been vastly improved over its predecessors.

Randomly the game will simply crash without any explaination. When searching for a reason, you will find an error log full of problems even before the crash, all of which never seem to be addressed even to this day.

The game is slow, and by slow I mean, I felt my beard growing while waiting for the game to figure out what it was doing. During multiplayer games, it would simply freeze and take actions back, clearly having sync issues. You would repeat the process over and over to no avail, and do something else to find it would either work or the game would have to be quit in order to continue anything else.

My friends and I had to quit several games in the middle of combat because of these issues, this led to simply getting a newer version.

Because Magic the Gathering is meant to be played with other people, sadly I cannot recommend this game for the reasons I have previously outlined.

A bunch of fun. This game has a load of content, but ideally is a great way to learn the rules of mtg. Being able to learn the stack, order of play, in a hands on way is pretty useful. I'd definitely recommend any of the Magic steam and iOS games to people wanting to get into the card games.

I think Magic 2014 is already avaliable for preorder, so this version may not necessarily be what you're after now.

Fantastic magic game, if only Wizards would make it so that people with 2014 could also use decks from previous versions of magic, that would be awesome !!!probably the best balance of decks in the last 3 years.

It's Magic on the PC. Doesn't get better than that for some people. While I wasn't a fan of the deck system, it still scratched that itch, for a fraction of the cost it would take to actually buy the damn cards.

If you're wondering if you should work your way through the games, don't. Get the latest one.

If you're a long time MTG player who's looking for a similar experience online though - you won't find it here; the customization aspect of deck building in this game is quite limited.

Give it a shot if you're into card games or if you're a new MTG player who wants to learn/practice the basics.

Word of warning if you're gonna get this game: Almost all of the DLCs do NOT offer additional content (except for the expansion and Deck Packs #1,2 &3 ) as you are still able to get most of the unlockables by progressing in the campaign.

I love the game in real life, and the love stayed for this game as well. Sometimes I wish it had so much more to it, but that would probably only equal me buying digital cards instead of real cards, and that just seems more sad. Fun game, good challenges, fun with friends or randoms.

AI always has a good hand, and always has it from the start. Examples being, game starts and AI gets a card that immediately gives them 7 creatures, or they somehow have a handful of 0 cost artifacts from the beginning. You on the other hand may be stuck with a handfull of lands, and it may take several rounds just to get 1 creature out.

Fun alternative to the classic card game, you don't need to waste your time by shuffling the cards, make sure that everybody play with the same rules etc ...But it's very limited and the major negative point is that you can't make your own deckSo it's a fun game if you already know the real card game but don't expect to play more than 1h every time you want to play it.

It's Magic, baby! Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 is a very competent port of the titular trading card game, despite some limitations.

Players will quickly discover that they are only able to make mild changes to pre-constructed decks, only being able to remove cards from decks or add one or more cards from a set of unlockable cards tied to each deck.

That being said, the pre-built decks are fun to use, and there is quite a diverse selection of these decks to satisfy most tastes.

The game contains worthwhile single-player modes and a bunch of multi-player modes. You'll be able to duel strangers online, play co-op against stupidly lucky AI, play free-for-alls and the like.

If you already play Magic, you will be instantly familiar with the gameplay. If not, the game does well enough to teach you the basics, as this game is meant to introduce newcomers to Magic: The Gathering.

Recommended for fans of, and newcomers to Magic: The Gathering. It's good stuff.

Solid tutorials, great decks, fantastic game modes, and stable multiplayer make this the best Magic game to come out. Magic 2012 and it’s Archenemy gamemode are the standard on which the rest of the games in the magic series should be evaluated against. It’s better than 2013 or 2014 – so buy and play this one first before trying the other games. $20 is a fair price for the 60+ hours of enjoyment you will get out of this game (and I had never even played the card game before purchasing this game).

This is a great purchase if you are a Magic fan or would like to learn the game, without making ridiculous annual investments to keeping up with new cards every year. A significant improvement over the original DotP available on Steam, now including text chat, toggle voice chat, and multiple new decks. Decks are now customizable in this game, with the exception of land cards (i.e. the game will automatically add or remove land cards to your deck, but you can switch out any other cards, whether unlocked or default in that deck). This game also includes online Two Headed Giant (differing from the original, which was only local co-op), which lets you play 2v2 online against the AI or other players.

The game also includes some interesting Magic lore, a new interface, new music (takes on a more ambient tone), and new sound effects. Computer AI has also significantly improved.